[Turtle]

___Great post Buff; I missed your great posts. I was going to mention the obsidian, but we studied so many other places on the trip I didn't remember for sure that Long Valley is the location. Quite the interesting sound it makes walking over boulders of glass. I think calling the scenic drive "escape route" is my professors tounge in cheeck cynicism poking through. Mono Lake is very salty indeed, but not dead; it is full of brine shrimp.
___On my post on the Montana "swarm", I e-mailed a geologist at the Earthquake Studies Office for Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology; he says these events constitute a main shock/aftershock sequence & not a swarm, making the distinction that in a swarm, the biggest event isn't usually first. Checking today, the sequence seems to have settled down.
___

[Buffy]

Turtle said:

Mono Lake is very salty indeed, but not dead; it is full of brine shrimp.

Didn't say dead. The area *abounds* in facinating life forms: my daughter spent an hour chasing the swarms of sand flies on the beach at the South Tufa last month! It is a "dead end" though, as it does not have a river outlet....other than LA sucking it into the aquaduct....

Cheers,
Buffy

[Turtle]

Turtle said:

___On my post on the Montana "swarm", I e-mailed a geologist at the Earthquake Studies Office for Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology; he says these events constitute a main shock/aftershock sequence & not a swarm, making the distinction that in a swarm, the biggest event isn't usually first. Checking today, the sequence seems to have settled down.
___

I spoke too soon; the Montana sequence is active today:
http://earthquake.us....-115.-105.html

[Turtle]

___Another moderate quake (3.4) at the Montana site. This all started with a 5.6 if I remember correctly. As Tormod points out in starting this thread, earthquake prediction remains beyond our grasp.
http://earthquake.us...akes/usbhag.htm

[Turtle]

___St. Helens continues to produce a 3.0 or better about every day & 1/2 now. Shake, rattle, & roll. I see we have a litlle shock/aftershock sequence in the New Madrid fault area this past day too:
http://earthquake.us...42.-95.-85.html

[Turtle]

___I spotted this piece on funding research into the newly discovered "slow" or "silent" quakes:
http://www.stuff.co....4435a10,00.html
___

[Turtle]

___A new slow quake has started September 6th in Cascadia.
http://www.pnsn.org/.../TREMOR_05.html
___Exciting geology rocks!

[Turtle]

___I only just found & started reading this document on a 9.0 earthquake scenario in Cascadia; this is about as good as it gets for prediction these days unless you follow the Moon Tide guy.
http://www.crew.org/...scadiaFinal.pdf

[Turtle]

___Just perusing the world seismograms & of course I like to always see what's shaking in my immediate neghiborhood. In so doing, I noticed this rather unusual activity from the Mt. Adams station. While some of the signal is due to wind, the abrupt signals correlate to quakes in the < 1.0 range. It is also interesting that neighboring St. Helens has no congruent signals, but rather is just chuffing along with the usual dome-building traces & wind signals.
___Anyway, this is an interesting change in Mt. Adams usual signals.
http://www.pnsn.org/...2005122012.html

[Chacmool]

Turtle said:

I have over the last year developed/aquired the ability to feel earthquakes; it is called the Charoltte King Effect. As I live just 51 miles from Mt. St. helens, lateley I find all the shaking very disconcerting.

Fascinating, Turtle! I haven't heard about this phenomenon before. Does Mt. St. Helens in particular affect you in any physical way? Can you make accurate earthquake predictions? Are you only affected by volcanic activity, or by all seismic activity?

[Turtle]

Chacmool said:

Fascinating, Turtle! I haven't heard about this phenomenon before. Does Mt. St. Helens in particular affect you in any physical way? Can you make accurate earthquake predictions? Are you only affected by volcanic activity, or by all seismic activity?

___The particular way St. Helens affects me is that my attention is kept on it because of the constant shaking. I don't attribute any predictive character to this; more or less I'm like a human seiesmogram without leaving a trace. As far as I have determined by checking the seismograms, I feel the events as they happen, & whether the shaking originates from the volcano(s) or not is inconsequential to feeling quakes.
___I have spent a couple years now checking dozens of real-time seismograms on a daily basis, both local & worldwide. What I see is that some events have strong association with other distant events in regard to the time of occurence & the shape of the event signal.
___A new study is just out which may shed light on the formation of the Wallowa mountains in NE Oregon as well as the highly unusal Columbia Basalt lava flows. Seems the Yellowstone hot spot may have played a roll in melting the deeper basalt & allowing the granitic Wallowas to float up in what is a geologically fast rise of a mountain range. This is particularly interesting because the Wallowas aren't near a plate boundary, which is the normal location & ultimate cause of raising many mountain ranges.
___Thanks for your inquiry Chacmool; always nice to hear from you.

[TheBigDog]

Here is something on earthquakes that I found fascinating. They use radar from a satallite to measure deformation of the earths surface. Reports I have seen on this indicate that you can see bulges forming that are like a coiled spring. The use has not been long enough to be conclusive, but it is very interesting.

http://news.national...earthquake.html

Bill

[Turtle]

webenton said:

Here is something on earthquakes that I found fascinating. They use radar from a satallite to measure deformation of the earths surface. Reports I have seen on this indicate that you can see bulges forming that are like a coiled spring. The use has not been long enough to be conclusive, but it is very interesting.

http://news.national...earthquake.html

Bill

___Thanks Bill for the link. The article briefly mentions GPS which is the main contributing factor in the new discovery of slow/silent quakes I mentioned earlier in this thread. As the technique gains recognition I expect the phenomenon will show up in other regions besides here in the Pacific Northwest of the US.
___Another growing bulge is found in the Three Sisters area of the Cascades too. The "coiled spring" idea is part & parcel of the great quake understanding along subduction zones as we saw in the 9.0 that generated the tsunami last year off Sumatra, as well as the now identified great quake activity on the Cascadia Subduction zone in my area.
___On average over the last 11,000 years, Cascadia has generated a great quake about every 500 years, with the last occuring approx. 300 years ago.

[Turtle]

___We just had a 7.4 in Mozambique, as well as aftershocks, making for a shock/aftershock sequence.
http://earthquake.us...akes/usjlca.php
http://earthquake.us...gion/Africa.php
___Wondering too if Boerseun or Chacmool felt this in South Africa?

[Chacmool]

Turtle said:

___We just had a 7.4 in Mozambique, as well as aftershocks, making for a shock/aftershock sequence.
http://earthquake.us...akes/usjlca.php
http://earthquake.us...gion/Africa.php
___Wondering too if Boerseun or Chacmool felt this in South Africa?

Thanks for thinking of us, dear Turtle! Although there were reports of the quake being felt in Johannesburg, I didn't feel a thing. Apparently our former president, Nelson Mandela, was in Mozambique with his wife (it's her home country), but he slept soundly through the entire earthquake while people in South Africa were fearing for his safety!

We do feel the occasional light quake in Johannesburg, but it has nothing to do with the Great Rift; it is usually caused by mining activity in the area.